Shores of the Heart

By Thea Marsh

Miranda lives on Martha's Vineyard with her husband and three young children. She meets Clay, a wealthy New Yorker, and becomes entangled in an affair that threatens her marriage. She has to decide if she will stay with her husband and give her children the life she wants for them or follow her passion to a life with Clay. The book challenges the readers to think about what decision they would make. By reading about Miranda, women will see themselves and feel understood and even celebrated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mira Digital Publishing
• Release date: Mar 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781631100451

Book preview

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Chapter 1

Preface

Day one, page one. I feel like a conductor, my baton raised before the first beat, before a single sound. I love the power of the written word. First I will tell you about Miranda and her home on Martha’s Vineyard, before I jump into this story, before I tell you about the affair that consumed her life. So many books take historical events as a focal point, and fiction can often give you a deeper understanding of the events. Many books are about outliers, anomalies, crimes, and all kinds of dysfunction. They are about people scrambling to escape the inevitable, life understood through the prism of the impossible. They illuminate what the human spirit can endure. They rarely give insight into the ordinary life, to look at deeper human emotions when the tragedy and loss are internal.

I wrote this book because ordinary lives are seldom the subject of such scrutiny. I hope that by telling about Miranda’s life, other women will see themselves and feel understood. As for the occasional man who may foray here, he may gain some insight into the women in his life.

Chapter 1

Voyage

My name is Miranda. I love books, my children and my husband, not necessarily in that order. I work in a bookstore. I always wanted to write a novel but instead I am going to tell you a story that actually happened to me. I think it reads like a novel. I suppose I should start by telling you a little about myself. I am average. Average height, average weight, average everything. Why stores are always out of my shoe size. Everything average until I met Clay. I have light brown hair that was blond when I was young. My eyes are hazel and change color depending on the weather or what I am wearing, but not because of my mood, I do not think. My father died when I was three years old and I lost my mother last year. I like to laugh, especially at myself. The other day I put both my legs into the same leg of my pants and I fell down. I could not get up because I was laughing so hard. I live in Martha’s Vineyard, an island six miles south of Cape Cod and not connected by a bridge.

We moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1975, the year that Gabe was born, but my family goes way back. My mother was born here and even though I grew up in Northport, Long Island, we vacationed here every summer. There are five towns on the Island, Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, and then up Island there is West Tisbury, Chilmark and Gay Head. If you were dropped into each town blindfolded you would know where you were as soon as the blindfold was off. Vineyard Haven where we live is the real New England town, Oaks Bluffs is a study in contrasts, the bars and the Campground, and Edgartown has the whaling captains’ houses, the more expensive shops and restaurants, the harbor, the incredible gardens and Chappaquiddick. Going up Island there are farms, and expensive homes down long dirt roads, and the ocean all along South Road, and Gay Head with those red cliffs, but no one is allowed to take mud baths anymore. In this one rather small geographical space, only twenty miles long, there are several totally discrete islands, and they rarely interact.

There are the year-rounders, the ones who provide all the services on the Island. There are the old farm families and the fishermen with roots to the Cape Verde Islands, and of course the Wampanoags in Gay Head, or Aquinnah as they call it. In the 1600’s when the Vineyard was settled there were over 3000 of them. Then there are the second homeowners, from the literary elite, the power-brokers, the famous and the near-famous, to the Campgrounders at the Tabernacle. There are also the short term vacationers – wholesome families from everywhere and also the beer drinking tattooed families from other parts of Massachusetts. There is very little interaction between the towns, between these groups, and even the beaches are divided up.

The old money on the Island is the most separated, hidden behind big hedges and down dirt roads. They bother no one and, as a matter of fact, they contribute enormous sums of money to every Island cause, land conservation, the hospital, and services for the Islanders. They are the backbone of every charitable endeavor. But in recent years a new kind of money has come to the Island, the self-centered announcing itself kind. Now we see Mercedes and Jaguars mixed in with the Land Rovers. These cars never wait at five corners. They and their occupants barrel through. All of us who love the Island hope this is a passing fad, that the jetsetters will settle like locusts on another resort area in a few years and we hope the place we love is not left leafless. The Island has a strength and life that goes beyond the immediate. It is Ice Age old and vibrates with the ancient Native-American chants. You feel that you are walking on sacred ground. The Island’s powerful energy sets the rhythm and engulfs dissonance. Lives lived here are not idyllic, but they are real. We are so closely connected to the land that we literally have the ground beneath our feet. And the sea, the sea is everywhere. You never lose contact with it. Its parameters shape your life, giving it form and substance. We have a safe warm womb in a protective sea. It is no wonder that when old-timers leave the Island, they say they are going to the U.S. We are not the fifty-first state. We are a state of mind.

How else should I describe myself? Well there were many times growing up when I missed having a father, half our family picture torn away. Some dads dropped their kids off at school and picked them up from sleepovers. When there were school events, it was only my mother who attended. Probably for me the longing for my father and the fantasy of the relationship was idealized beyond any reality. Not a father who came home from work dog-tired and snapped at their mother and them. No, the father who kissed their mother and would have taken that wrinkle out of her brow, and brought flowers which would have stopped her sighing. Oh, you can really miss something that you have never had, something you feel entitled to. The loss is part of you and you feel less of a person because of it. Other relatives and friends’ fathers try to fill the void, but you are a fatherless child and you worry about your mother even more because it is only the two of you.

In Northport there were other kids who lived only with their mothers. Most of them were divorced. These kids were often disappointed that their fathers did not take them for the weekend like they were supposed to, or their mothers were always complaining to them that their fathers did not give them enough money. The kids who were most upset though were the ones whose fathers had new families. Despite being told by the counselors, which most of them had seen, that they were not the ones being rejected that is exactly how they felt. Their fathers chose to live with these other kids and many of them were step kids, and not spend time with them. These kids were usually angry with their mothers too, whom they blamed as much as their fathers. My situation was much better. I knew that my father did not leave me by choice. It was actually a blessing that I could hardly remember him. I also got to see my Uncle James every summer on the Vineyard and he always told me he was going to walk me down the aisle at my wedding.

Yet when I was eleven years old something happened that devastated me. It was November and I was in sixth grade. I remember the day so clearly. Mrs. Donovan announced to the class that President Kennedy had been shot. Most of the kids started crying. I just felt shocked. It was the end of the day on a Friday. Many parents come up to the school, including my mother. I remember just sitting in front of the television all weekend. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. None of it seemed real. I watched the solemn funeral procession, and seeing Caroline, who was a little older than I was, when my father died, made me burst into tears that did not stop.

I know that everyone in the country, including my mother, was devastated but for me it was something more personal. As if losing the father of our country, was like losing my father all over again. I did not know I had such a deep well of sadness in me. How could something like this happen? President Kennedy was a young healthy man and I pictured my father also having his life snatched away from him. I felt such a connection to the Kennedy children, especially Caroline and wondered in a childlike way, if one of her uncles would walk her down the aisle. As the years went by somehow my father’s death and President Kennedy’s got twisted up in my memory and feelings.

I liked to hear stories about my parents’ early relationship. My mother told me that she met my father, Gabriel Michaels, through her brother. James mentioned at dinner that a nice young guy just moved to the Island from New York City. He was working with them on the new school. He did not really know anyone on the Island, and got there from a notice in the paper. He was renting a room from Mrs. Daggett, and James asked if he could invite him to dinner.

Miranda, I really did not think of it until the following Friday when your father walked in the door. There was just something about him that made you take notice, a twinkle in his eye, a quickness in his step, and his crooked half smile. He made his greetings, thanking my mother for inviting him and then turned to James and said, Why didn’t you tell me you had such a beautiful sister?"

I couldn’t imagine that he would have the slightest interest in me. He was from New York and must have had dozens of girls more exciting than I was. Yet the next week he called to ask me to go to the movies and that was how it all started.

My mother also told me about my father’s family, since both my grandparents had died before I was born. I knew a lot more about my mother’s side of the family, the Wests old New England Yankees and the Noonans, my grandfather’s Irish clan. My father’s parents, Clara Haussmann and Carl Michaels, were both from Germany but they had met and married in New York. My father grew up on 87th Street on the east side of Manhattan. My mother would then continue with a far-away look in her eyes. She loved to go over this story and told it to me many times.

We had a whirlwind courtship and one day your father said to me that when he was with me, he was hearing wedding bells. With the war in Europe, there was so much talk about the United States getting involved. Your father was worried about getting drafted. We decided to move up the wedding to September. Remember we had just met in April. It was a small wedding with your father’s family coming up on the steamer. The ceremony was in our little church, and then we had a nice luncheon at my house. Grandma Alice made such a beautiful wedding cake. It had three tiers with a little bride and groom on top. I still have them, you know.

I liked to hear about Grandma Alice, and all the Wests, my mother’s relatives on the Vineyard. Grandma Alice had died when I was only five years old.

My mother continued, We were just so happy. Then it was December 7th and two weeks later your father was drafted. So the first four years of our marriage we were apart. I wrote to your father every day and he wrote as often as he could. Now my mother would get a troubled look.

It was such a difficult time. I lived in dread of getting a telegram. That’s how you would know if something happened. I didn’t even know where your father was so much of that time. Finally the war ended and your father was coming home. Everyone was going crazy. You can’t imagine the celebrating. There was a big parade and we all came out to meet the ferry when your father and the other soldiers returned. It was like the world was painted back into color, she smiled.

In the years to come, your father did not talk much about the war or the friends he lost. When he came home, he went right back to work with Uncle James who by now had his own construction company. But your father was changed. He said he didn’t want to work outdoors anymore. His cousin John had moved to Huntington, Long Island and had opened an appliance store. He wanted your father to come in as a partner so they could expand to carry tires and sporting goods.

My mother would look to see if I was still interested in the story. And although I had heard the story so many times, I loved listening to it again. For both of us, it kept my father alive and spun us into a family, and not just the two of us.

My mother would go on, We went to visit Cousin John in Huntington. It was a real nice town with a lot of building going on. We thought it would be a really good opportunity and we planned our move. Well that’s how we ended up in this little house in Northport, since it was just a few miles east of Huntington. We looked at a few houses, although not so many were available with all these soldiers coming back and getting married. I fell in love with Northport, maybe because it reminded me of the Vineyard, with its boats in the harbor. And I fell in love with this house. It was just the right size and we could swing it with the G.I. mortgage. I loved the picket fence, the garden, and the glimpse of the water through the trees.

Everything was swell except for one thing, and her mother’s voice would drop to a whisper. I didn’t get pregnant. We had that extra bedroom in the house, but the baby never came.

My doctor told me there was nothing wrong with me, but month after month I was disappointed. I began to give up hope that we would ever have a child. Your father never expressed any disappointment to me and, truth be told, he did everything to bolster my spirits.

He would say, ‘You’re everything to me. I don’t need one extra thing.

That is why when I got pregnant and then had you, it was like a miracle. I had given up hope. We had been married for over ten years and I was almost thirty two. In those days that was really old for a first time mother. I never minded the sleepless nights and honestly those were the happiest years of my life. Until that day in November, my mother’s voice would trail off. The date is branded with a hot iron on my heart. When Cousin Jack called to tell me that they took your father to the hospital, I didn’t know what had happened. Everything was a blur. I don’t even know how I got to the hospital.

Then the rest of the story always gets mixed with tears and sighs and a voice as flat as a cake that did not rise when you took it out of the oven. This was the hardest part for me to hear.

I thought how could this happen? Who stole our life away? I cried and cried for days. I cried so much I could not believe the unending supply of tears. No one could comfort me. Every word was like a knife stabbing into my heart. I did not want to face anyone. Yet I had to be strong for you. You scarcely knew what was going on, but you patted me and told me not to cry. I was so happy to have you, my one still solid link to your father. Yet anything you did that reminded me of him was like pouring acid on a fresh wound. Then the thoughts would come to me that you would never know your father. And that the loss in your life was devastating to me also. I saw the family photograph ripped in two, and you and I were standing by the jagged edge. You would not have a father to run to when he came home from work, or go with to those father-daughter dances. My mind did not let me go to your wedding. It was like a bitter pill that I had to swallow over and over again. It was something I could not make up to you. I felt the loss would always be a part of us. I wanted my husband and your father back.

I think we did okay, Mom. You did okay, I would tell her. That was usually the end of the story. My mother never told me more of the details. I have my own recollections of that time, but they are mixed with strangely happy ones. I remember Grandma Alice, who came right down to stay with us,